Paul Butler on Judith Resnik on abolition and the carceral state. I'll just stand over here balkin.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-...

Today is Pauli Murray's 115th birthday. If you're a law student (or just a curious person) and don't know who they are, look them up! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauli_M... (And if you're in Durham, go check out @paulimurraycenter.bsky.social ! I had the privilege of visiting yesterday and it's great.)

I am thrilled to be the new #ASLH president, receiving the gavel yesterday from former president Barbara Welke at our Detroit conference awards ceremony. My term is 2025-27. Excited to get to work! #legalhistory

Happy Birthday, Felix Frankfurter. Born OTD in 1882. He encouraged generations of law students and law clerks to go into public service. And he was the last justice who espoused James Bradley Thayer's theory of justice restraint.

Today in redistricting and civil rights history www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/go...

So excited to be at the annual meeting of the American Society for Legal History over the next few days! Check out the program here: aslh.net/wp-content/u... #ASLH #LegalHistory

Reminder for 2025 Detroit #ASLH people: check out our *new* table for recently pub. legal history books not otherwise represented @ book sale! Authors donate a copy & everyone else can enter raffle for each book. I'll pull names of winners on Sat. morning & winners pick up books before end of day

“Nearer to Thee”: The Still Evolving Legacy and Politics of Sam Cooke by Mark Anthony Neal medium.com/@tnimixtape/... 🤎

Great column by @jamellebouie.net on how a future Congress can wield its "broad array of powers" to restore our democracy. With quotes from excellent books by @richardprimus.bsky.social and my @georgetownlaw.bsky.social colleague @joshchafetz.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/o...

George Downing (b. 1818) was an entrepreneur & civic leader who participated in the Underground Railroad & achieved the desegregation of Newport, RI schools. His father, Thomas Downing, born in Virginia to formerly enslaved parents in 1791, was Manhattan’s 1st eminent purveyor of oysters.

I am delighted to announce that I have signed a contract with Cambridge University Press to publish my new book, “One Nation Under Law: The Meaning of the Declaration of Independence.” Look for it in 2026, for the 250th anniversary!

Great job Centre College for honoring Justice John Marshall Harlan. Every law student should read Harlan's dissent in the Civil Rights Cases of 1883. www.centre.edu/news/john-ma...

One of Charles Sumner’s greatest lines came out of the debate over a bust of the chief justice: “If a man has done evil in his life, he must not be complimented in marble.”

John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry began on October 16, 1859.

Congratulations to @gauthamrao.bsky.social!! Some books just take their time. I am inspired that yours is out!

Do you remember . . .

Check your public television schedules. “Becoming Thurgood” will air multiple times this week and throughout the month. Catch it!

For folks who are wondering just how long #SCOTUS has had the power to behave the way it’s behaving on emergency applications (mostly since 1925), and whether the Court’s recent behavior is meaningfully different from, say, prior to 2015 (it sure is), you might find my book at least somewhat useful:

Must-watch: “Becoming Thurgood.” In NYC, it will be on starting in 10 minutes.

Charles Sumner, 1875, by #AnneWhitney (American, 1821-1915), who was born #otd, Sept 2. Located in General MacArthur Square, Cambridge, MA. #womenartists #artherstory

In the NIH funding case, Justice Gorsuch (joined by Justice Kavanaugh) claimed that this was the third time in recent weeks that lower courts had "defied" a #SCOTUS ruling. As today's "One First" explains, that claim is not only nonsense; it's enabling a dangerous anti-court narrative on the right:

That's a great question. I think I do because I read the secondary literature first& I often have other historians' thoughts on the matter top of mind. But I also keep a timeline/chronology right there too. "OK this was written in March 1922. What happened in February 1922 that may have shaped this"

This Day in Labor History: August 23, 1927. The state of Massachusetts executed two Italian immigrant anarchists by the names of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti for the murder of two men in a 1920 armed robbery in South Braintree. Their real crime: being Italian anarchists!

51 years ago, Richard Nixon resigned the presidency on national TV. Later that night, according to Jimmy Breslin’s account in How the Good Guys Finally Won, Nixon called a friend and said, “Yes, a lot of heads of state have gone to jail. Gandhi went to prison, you know.” loa.org/books/788

If judges are play-acting as historians and getting the history wildly wrong, then actual historians have a duty to step in and set the record straight. Sorry if that doesn’t stop the free fall of the profession, but we’re going to keep doing it all the same, thanks

A Westlaw search suggests that it is the first law review article ever to cite this Onion classic ... theonion.com/supreme-cour...

Okay, friends this book is really *incredible*! I spent the last week devouring all 500 pages. I couldn’t put it down. I hardly knew anything of Sumner but the caning & am now convinced he deserves a prized place in our histories. Ahead of his time, principled & unafraid to speak unpopular truths.

From @ngertner.bsky.social & me in @nytimes.com: "Ms. Bondi wrote that Judge Boasberg’s comments 'have undermined the integrity of the judiciary . . . .' No. The way to look at this is the inverse: Her Justice Department is attempting to undermine the integrity of the judiciary and the rule of law."

I’d forgotten that I shared a birthday with the VRA — as well as former President Obama. Thanks @kevinmkruse.bsky.social for the reminder, and a great essay on the DOJ’s work in putting it into effect — and the amazingly rapid effects on the law. campaign-trails.ghost.io/work-in-prog...

Agree, though I think what we really, desperately need is a movie that runs from Appomattox to the Compromise of 1877. America needs an anti-Birth of a Nation to understand how the heroes of Reconstruction got sidelined.

the voting rights act is, in its entirety, obviously constitutional under the 15th amendment, which gives congress broad and proactive authority to stop racial discrimination in voting. and you know it is obviously constitutional because roberts has had to invent entire new doctrines to gut it.

Starred review from @publisherswkly.bsky.social says The Radical Fund is “an immense and essential achievement” with an “exhilarating range of figures” and “stark parallels with the present.” www.publishersweekly.com/9781476765877

121/141 2025 Official Submission #MAAHStoneAtoZ

For example, Reconstruction. A generation of historians, from Eric Foner to Manisha Sinha, have built a rich portrait of the profound "unfinished revolution" of Reconstruction. I don't claim academic mastery, but it raised questions for me about Custer, though we associate him with the West. 3/12

I write serious history—via biography—for a non-academic audience. So I'd like to say something about Ken Burns's remark, something that also explains why AI can't write history. Pardon me for citing the example of one of my books, "Custer's Trials," on one of history's best-known figures. 1/12

I'm now obsessed with this image of sailors on the deck of a U.S. Navy gunboat during the Civil War. The guy with the banjo. The guy with the pipe. The guy reading the newspaper. The guy holding a dog. catalog.archives.gov/id/526207

Wonderful evening talking about the Declaration of Independence over the years with David Blight, Akhil Reed Amar, and Jeff Rosen at the National Convention Center.

The Posse Comitatus Act was a symbolic gesture to mark the death of Reconstruction but it was also a practical measure that ensured that white supremacist state governments enjoyed a monopoly of force. In effect, the federal government could no longer intervene.

Historian here good to see the caning of Charles Sumner get this attention. I published an article on it a long time ago in the Journal of the Early Republic which was one of their most downloaded articles for some time. jstor.org/stable/3125037

Justice Marshall jokingly called him "Junior" when he was elevated the year I clerked for Marshall at the Court. A very kind, decent and thoughtful man who was non-ideological, just and humane in his reasoning. May he rest in peace! www.nytimes.com/2025/05/09/u...

Hidden legacies! Our new American pope was born in Chicago, but his maternal ancestors were Creoles of color from New Orleans, according to Jari Honora, a genealogist and family historian at the Historic New Orleans Collection. #PopeLeoXIV

NY friends: My book talk at the @nypl.bsky.social is tomorrow at 6:30 pm. Register here - especially if you are looking for something to do besides grade exams. www.nypl.org/events/progr...

#OTD The Supreme Court rules in 1937 that Angelo Herndon's conviction for attempting to incite insurrection violated his rights to free speech & peaceable assembly: "The power of a state to abridge freedom of speech and of assembly is the exception, rather than the rule. . . ."

Valuable new paper from Wisconsin's David Schwartz about Dred Scott, due process, and enumerated powers: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Q&A | "It’s important to remember that the rights to free speech and peaceable assembly are no accident: They were hard-won and fought for." @bradsnyderprof.bsky.social discusses his new book on Angelo Herndon and the landmark SCOTUS decision that upheld the right to protest. 🔗 bit.ly/4czqVgc